


the center of all beauty (here i am)

by patrokla



Category: Darling (1965)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 19:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17250299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: To be able to watch the sea, with no pressing concerns, no operator voices to fake, that was the essence of contentment.In which Diana stays in Italy, does not marry the Prince, and makes a home.





	the center of all beauty (here i am)

**Author's Note:**

> Let it never be said that I don't know what the people want! What they want, obviously, is a fic for a 1965 film that won awards back in the day and has been almost entirely forgotten now. If you're unfamiliar with the film and reading this anyways - Julie Christie played Diana, and Dirk Bogarde played Robert. They were both magnificent.
> 
> Title from Frank O'Hara's 'Autobiographia Literaria', and my apologies to Mr. O'Hara, who wrote that he would never settle down in the countryside.

“I was just thinking how nice it would be if we could live here.”

—

She writes Robert a letter a few months into their stay. Well, it's not a stay, exactly. There’s an implication of ephemerality there that Diana doesn’t feel, for the first time in her life.  
  
The Italian countryside suits her. It suits Malcolm even better; he’s spent the last three days at the home of his Italian boy. Cristiano, she thinks he’s called. They’d agreed to share him, but in the end she prefers to be alone. Or - to watch.  
  
The letter is the last of a whole bushel of letters she’d had to send. Letters cancelling the lease for that awful flat, having her things forwarded to Italy, informing Miles and the rest of the damned businessmen where she’d gone. After the dust started to settle, and her thoughts returned more and more to Robert, she began to think that it wouldn’t be so terrible to write him.  
  
Polite, even. A simple letter, informing him of where she’d gone. Not why, not how long, just where. She doesn’t expect a response. She certainly doesn’t expect him to turn up.  
  
When he does neither, she’s disappointed.  
  
—  
  
They’re the gossip of the nameless village that lies pressed against the ocean, right on the edge of the coast. The villagers are friendly but watchful, and when Diana ventures out for food, or just to wander through the streets, she feels pinned by their bright, narrowed eyes.  
  
She has taken to watching a crumbling apartment building that is slowly falling into the sea, for hours at a time. Some days, entire walls drop into the water. Others, only a window pane.  
  
Briefly, she considers taking a lover. Malcom seems perfectly content with his, and, despite the tiny population, she’s seen several men that she wouldn’t mind taking back to the cottage.  
  
And yet. Something stays her, gives her pause when the men smile and wink at her. They’re forward, Italians, but in a warm way. She appreciates their gazes, but at the end of the day she returns home alone.  
  
She’s not slept alone in years. It feels too strange to be good, but too good to be bad.  
  
—  
  
Miles had written back, of course. It was a form letter, she could tell, that explained that he was no longer her agent. He took forty percent of what she’d earned from the Happiness Girl shoot, and didn’t include even a note. It was precisely what she’d expected.  
  
Even with forty percent gone, she had quite a bit of money. Not enough for more than a year or so, but enough that she didn’t worry. Still, when the Prince offered her a job, she accepted.  
  
It was less for the pay and more to be working. She enjoyed her long hours of solitude, and the time spent heckling Malcolm (he’d fallen head over heels for Cristiano, apparently). To be able to watch the sea, with no pressing concerns, no operator voices to fake, that was the essence of contentment.  
  
Still, it feels good to act with purpose. He has her pose for a portrait, and tells her at the start to be honest.  
  
“Let your soul shine through,” he says, and then a few moments later, “No, with some emotion, darling. Some light!”  
  
So it is a job like any other, really. But despite his earlier proposal, he seems content not to press the issue, and that in and of itself is a relief.  
  
—  
  
She decorates the cottage herself. Malcolm contributes dozens of photos, most of which she vetoes on the grounds that it’s awfully pretentious to put photos of yourself up anywhere but the bedroom.  
  
It’s the first time since leaving home that she’s really felt like a place was her own. Tony had monopolized their tiny flat, with grammar school trophies and records, and Robert had left his damn books everywhere, and Miles, of course, had never asked her to move in properly, so the place was his entirely.  
  
For years she’s been carving out space for herself, but now - now she has somewhere of her own. A place to call home.  
  
She begins growing rose bushes in pots, and planters full of basil and tomato plants. In the mornings, she and Malcolm go to the market to buy fresh bread and goat cheese, and they feast on bruschetta with thick slices of Diana’s tomatoes for days at a time.  
  
—  
  
There are bad days. Days when Malcolm goes off to photograph things, or to see Cristiano, and she’s left alone. She’s not made any friends, really, or learnt much of the language, and without Malcolm she feels very much what she truly is, a flighty foreigner with no real plan for her life.  
  
On those days, she sits on the roof and cries for hours at a time. Nothing, not her plants or her carefully selected sofa cushions, can console her. Nothing but the exhaustion of steady tears brings those days to a close.  
  
—  
  
Two, three, four months pass like this. The good days, the quiet days, and the bad days. Everything only slightly less than jumbled. She takes up sketching, trying to capture the apartment building every day. The way it’s falling apart. The way no one else notices.  
  
Malcolm begins photographing her again, and she doesn’t ask what it’s for. In return, he doesn’t ask her to look happy. Perhaps what she feels is enough. Perhaps he has other needs this time.  
  
—  
  
In a moment of extreme weakness, she writes Robert another letter. It’s not about anything in particular, just fragments of what her life is like now. How good everything must be. She puts one of her sketches in, the one from the day the side door fell from its remaining rusty hinge and was carried away by the waves.  
  
Her heirloom tomatoes are flourishing, a riot of heavy color on the veranda. She picks the ripest one and squeezes it between her hands until the juice runs in sticky streams to the street below.  
  
—  
  
She’s sunbathing on the roof when Robert arrives. She spots him down in the street, looking pale and out of place in his overcoat. For a single mad moment, she imagines throwing something at him, or going to the veranda to drop a rose bush on his head. Then she goes to get dressed.  
  
In the end she opens the door wearing a shift, the same one she’d worn so many years ago on the train. He doesn’t smile, but he does raise an eyebrow. She counts it as a victory.  
  
“Come in,” she says, and then, “For God’s sakes, Robert. Take your coat off.”  
  
He does smile at that, a wry quirk of his lips. She almost counts that as a victory too, and then decides she doesn’t particularly want to.  
  
“Come on, Robert,” she says, tossing his coat on the hall table.  
  
“Let me show you my home."


End file.
